Bhutan's technical education schooling system

 Bhutan's Government has an excellent education system aimed especially at children who are disadvantaged and who have no future unless they are given some form of training. 

They are taught painting, carpentry, metalwork, sculpture, embroidery and tailoring, traditional shoe making  etc. 

Duration of courses vary but minium is for four years.  The first two years are elementary and in the third year of the course it becomes more serious. 

Here we have boys learning how to use carpentry tools by carving into wooden panels various local designs.   

Below is a Carpentry classroom 
This is the classroom where boys and girls learn stitching and tailoring as well as embroidery. Tailoring is a year's course after the basics are learnt. 

This is the traditional Bhutanese shoe. The design has a meaning. Look carefully. 

The boot has a long vertical strip which represents a snake. 
The tip of the boot has a nose and resembles the pig's.
The eyes painted on are those of a bird representing desire. 

In life there are three poisons - anger, hatred, desire.

By having these on the boot, you are stamping these out underfoot !!

Wonderful imagery , beautiful shoes and realistic logic.  

A young girl patiently learns embroidery. They are very proficient by the time they leave school. A sample of their work can be seen on the banner as well as below.  

Here the young man is doing metal work. 

The drawing and painting course is a six year program. The students appear to do repetitive drawing in the initial years, then progress to sketches and finally make grids to undertake larger drawings. They use acrylic paints. From what little I saw in our hour long stay in the school, the facilities and tools could definitely be improved.  The material used are not that good, they dont have easels and I believe that the basics are not really taught as they should be - teachers come and sit doing their own work and supervising. Maybe its different. I hope so.  

This is the tailoring classroom with dummies etc for fittings. 


Hordes of tourists come to see the school and students so I dont know how they can concentrate when we are all walking around them, taking photos and disturbing their studies. Its a wonderful idea to teach these subjects to the deprived youngsters but they need motivation too. One hopes that the Governing Body will create better avenues for the kids. 















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